He talks at length on the societal efforts to "cure cancer", and how those came about. I think you're under the impression that we don't spend much money or effort on cancer research, but we do. We spend a lot of both. I suppose we can debate if it's "enough." It is, however, a ridiculously hard problem. There needed to be, and still need to be, fundamental scientific breakthroughs in order for treatments to progress.

Anyway, I'm not so much trying to counter what you've said. Rather, I want to point you to a book that I think covers topics that you are clearly interested in.